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Monday, October 13, 2008

I mentioned awhile back about my late night trip to an Atlanta hospital to be with a sick family member. It took several hours of being transferred from one department to another department and filling out a lot of paperwork before things began to calm down a bit. It was 2:45 in the morning and we were very tired.

You really don’t have a lot of options at that time in the morning. We were in the party section of Atlanta and most of the hotels were probably already filled up with drunks, one-night stands or Georgia Tech fans.

Even if we would’ve found a hotel we would have had to check out by 11:00 AM. This in itself isn’t a bad thing but when you check in at 4:00 AM, it seems like a waste of money.

Unfortunately, my family knows its way around hospitals. There are certain waiting rooms that have reclining chairs and somewhat comfortable couches. You can also get blankets and pillows which can make your visit a little more comfortable. But, there’s a catch. These prime positions in the waiting rooms fill up very fast. You need to have claimed your spot by 6:00 PM at the latest or you can expect to spend the night in a chair with hard wooden sides or a loveseat that has one too many soft drink stains.

This was the predicament that my mom and I found ourselves in; try and find a hotel for six hours or sleep in the waiting room on the leftover torture chairs. We didn’t like either option so we decided to sleep in the car.

It wasn’t very comfortable; in fact, it was terrible. I have a Mustang and the seats don’t recline very far back. I sat in the driver’s seat and I don’t have a removable steering wheel. I couldn’t cross my legs or even stretch them out. I couldn’t turn to one side because the steering wheel was always in the way.

I don’t know how mom did it but the next thing I knew she was snoring over there in the passenger seat. She slept for about three hours.

I dozed from 2:47 until 3:18. The parking area was a very noisy place and was very well lit. I had my sunglasses on trying to keep out the lights. I had cracked the windows to let the air flow through but it eventually got hot. I had drunk to many soft drinks, and, of course, I need to use the facilities.

I held it as long as I could I didn’t want to wake up mom by getting out of the car. I think it was about 6:00 o’clock when mom opened her eyes and saw me grimacing. I had to go I told her and I hadn’t wanted to wake her up.

Wake her up she said, she hadn’t been asleep at all; she was just resting her eyes.